‘I don’t really know how it happened,’ she said. ‘Mum never said how we ended up there.’
‘Just lucky, then?’ replied Robert.
‘Right,’ said Caitlin. ‘Just lucky.’
‘What time does it get dark?’
It was 4 pm on Grant’s first day on the
Blue Moon
, and being a redhead he was slathered in sunscreen and wearing a baseball cap and mirrored sunglasses in an effort to keep the sun from blistering his freckled face.
‘It can stay light until seven o’clock,’ said Caitlin.
Grant adjusted his cap. ‘In New York it’s dark around now.’
‘I couldn’t hack that,’ said Trevor. He’d steered the boat out past Horseshoe Bay towards North Molle, but when he’d offered to drop anchor so the guests could swim they’d said no, they were fine just dozing with beers in their deckchairs.
‘Don’t interrupt her,’ Robert told Grant. ‘I want to hear more about growing up on one of the islands out here. It sounds brilliant.’
Caitlin opened three more cans. ‘I guess it’s what you’re used to.’
‘Well, what kind of island is Magnetic?’ asked Robert. ‘Tropical?’
‘It’s all pretty tropical around here,’ said Caitlin. She handed out the beers and put the empties in the plastic garbage bin. Then she stood awkwardly, in her torn shorts and tied shirt, with one tanned foot curled over the other. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was supposed to do for her guests. She’d offered to make sandwiches. They’d declined, but then when she’d carried a bowl of peanuts and another of salted cashews up from the galley, they’d taken great handfuls and eaten them all. She’d asked them if they wanted her to get any of the equipment out – for jet-skiing or snorkelling – and they’d said no, they were happy just to be on the deck, faces tilted towards the sun.
‘It’s like they’re half-asleep,’ Caitlin had whispered to Trevor.
‘That’s the jet lag. They’ll be different tomorrow. Just sit and talk to them and if they ask for anything, get it.’
Caitlin shrugged. ‘Are you sure?’ It didn’t seem right to be paid to sit on the deck in the sunshine, even if she, personally, wasn’t drinking beer, but Trevor said it was fine.
‘So, your friends, when you say you grew up on an island, they must be jealous, right?’ said Robert. ‘Or does everyone around here do that?’
‘Everyone does not do that,’ said Trevor. ‘Caitlin’s lucky. Magnetic’s beautiful. And they say it’s got magic powers.’
Robert lowered his sunglasses. ‘Magic how?’
‘Well, Captain Cook – he’s the bloke who discovered Australia – used to complain that his compass would go funny when he sailed past Magnetic.’
‘That’s how it got the name,’ Caitlin agreed.
‘Well, did you hear that, Colby?’ said Robert. ‘Our little castaway is from a
magic
island. An island so powerful it can turn your compass! That sounds hot. Ha. That sounds
cool
, actually.’
Colby had been standing beside Trevor, looking out towards the horizon. Grant was half-asleep in his deckchair.
‘I don’t think it’s actually true,’ said Caitlin. ‘It’s just what they taught us in school.’
‘Did they teach you that Captain Cook discovered Australia, too?’ Colby asked suddenly. He hadn’t turned around.
‘Yes,’ said Caitlin, nervously.
‘Well, I don’t think that’s true.’
‘You mean because of the Aborigines?’
‘I mean because of the Portuguese.’
Caitlin hadn’t known what he was talking about. Robert saw her confusion, and jumped in to save her from embarrassment. ‘Ignore him,’ he said. ‘He’ll have read something in a book. Don’t let him lecture you about it. And I don’t want to hear about the Portuguese. I want to hear about Magnetic. How many people live there? Did you have an apartment or a house?’
‘A house,’ said Caitlin. ‘I don’t think there were many apartments.’
She was still a bit flushed – embarrassed, actually – by Colby’s intervention. Did he think she was stupid? She was also surprised by how much she suddenly cared about what Colby thought.
‘And what kind of house was it?’ asked Robert.
‘I don’t know. Just a
house
house.’
‘And did you go to school on the island, or did you have to go to the mainland for school?’
‘There’s a school there at Horseshoe Bay,’ said Caitlin. ‘We had to walk over a little creek to get there. There were stepping stones. And there’s a shark cage in the bay, so if it’s lunchtime, you can swim. You can see the shark cage, actually, if you go down with goggles. It’s got wooden bars, with slime hanging off them, and sometimes you’d see a hammerhead on the other side, looking back at you.’
‘Hammerheads!’ said Robert. ‘That’s fantastic.’ He was delighted. ‘Did you hear that, Grant? Daisy Duke here went to school with sharks.’
From behind his mirrored glasses, a dozy Grant murmured, ‘I work on Wall Street with sharks.’
‘I’ve got to know more,’ said Robert. ‘Tell me everything, Daisy Duke. But get me another beer first. And don’t let me fall asleep. We’ve got a plan to stay up until it’s dark. Then we’ll eat. Then we’ll nap. Then we’ll wake up tomorrow, and all this jet lag will be gone.’
Caitlin nodded, and went down the tiny spiral staircase to the galley. She was wondering how much to share. Magnetic Island is famous as a nature reserve. There’s a colony of tame
rock wallabies. It’s home to the curlew, a bird with thick knees that bend backwards. Hippies think it’s paradise, and where you find hippies, you find marijuana. Caitlin had grown up with that: she learned to count with her mother’s five-weight copper scales. And where there’s drugs there’s often other problems, all of which were on her mind as she emerged from the galley with three more beers.
‘So, did you just have the run of the island?’ Robert asked. ‘Or am I fantasising?’
‘You’re fantasising,’ murmured Grant, but he didn’t mean about the island.
‘I suppose I did. Mum was pretty slack,’ said Caitlin. ‘I didn’t really get told what to do, if that’s what you mean.’ She wasn’t kidding: there were some hippies on Magnetic in the early 1980s who practised what’s now known as attachment parenting, meaning they kept their toddlers on their long nipples until well after they could walk. But Ruby’s style, if she even had a style, might best be characterised as benign neglect. ‘Go away,’ she’d say if Caitlin ventured home before it was completely dark, ‘and don’t come back unless you’re bleeding.’ But actually, there was no point in Caitlin heading home when she was bleeding. Ruby wasn’t the type to keep Smurfette Band-Aids in a medicine kit. She’d hold open whatever wound Caitlin presented to her, pour water into it, and then she’d say, ‘Okay, off you go.’ If Caitlin said, ‘But it hurts, Mummy,’ Ruby would scoff and say, ‘You’ll live.’
Ruby’s cooking wasn’t her strong point either. She served up Cornflakes for breakfast, and cheese jaffles, or baked
beans on toast, at what she called ‘teatime’. And she never ran a bath for Caitlin and she never cut her hair, except once, and that was only after the school ordered her to do it because Caitlin had nits. The memory was seared into Caitlin’s psyche. She had been sitting at her wooden lift-top desk in Mrs Landry’s class at the school at Horseshoe Bay when the child behind her shot up his hand.
‘Nits!’ he said. ‘Caitlin’s got nits!’
The class collectively said, ‘EWWWW!’
Mrs Landry said, ‘Quiet!’ and ‘Don’t be so silly.’
‘But they’re jumping off her head, Mrs Landry! They’re jumping on my desk!’
Mrs Landry walked briskly down the aisle towards Caitlin’s desk. Caitlin was beetroot red, and she’d never felt more like she wanted to reach up and scratch her head, but she didn’t.
‘Look, look!’ said the boy. He was on his feet, dancing from one foot to the other, pointing and saying, ‘Look, there it is!’ And there it was: a single nit with a translucent body, limping crookedly across the surface of his wooden desk.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Mrs Landry. She squashed the nit and gently touched Caitlin’s shoulder, saying, ‘It’s alright.’ But the rules decreed that a note go home. Caitlin would have to have a nit treatment and, to prove it had been done, she would need to bring the empty nit solution container to class. She walked home feeling the weight of that problem. Ruby loathed spending money on nit treatments (and on shampoo, conditioner, soap, toothpaste,
toothbrushes, floss, make-up, pimple cream, hairbands, and pretty much everything else).
‘Sweet Jesus,’ said Ruby, when Caitlin broke the news. ‘So, you’ve got nits. Doesn’t everyone?’
‘You have to get the special wash,’ said Caitlin, but there was only one shop on Magnetic, and it kept strange hours. ‘We can go to Townsville. We can go on the ferry.’
‘No, we can’t,’ said Ruby. ‘It’s ridiculous, a teacher telling people how to spend their own money, and how to live their lives.’ She got up, and went into the pink-tiled bathroom. ‘Like every kid at that bloody school hasn’t had nits at one time or another. Now they want me to
prove
that I’m doing something about it? Anybody else’s parents have to
prove
anything to the teacher?’
She had been looking for scissors, but not found them. ‘I’ll prove that I’ve done something about it,’ she said. ‘Come here, and bring the StaySharp with you.’
The StaySharp was a twelve-inch kitchen knife that lived in a triangular plastic case stuck with double-sided tape to the kitchen bench. In normal circumstances, Caitlin loved to drag the blade out by the black handle, but on this day she refused.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Ruby, drawing the blade herself.
‘Sit,’ she said, and Caitlin sat between Ruby’s knees and under her lit cigarette, and she cried silently as her mother hacked at her hair with the StaySharp. ‘Now you can go back to school and you can tell them, “Mum fixed my nits.”’
Caitlin did go back to school, with hair chopped like felled trees in a forest.
‘Goodness,’ said Mrs Landry, ‘did you do that yourself?’
‘Yes,’ Caitlin said.
‘Oh my! Why didn’t you ask your mum?’
‘Mum’s not feeling well.’
That was in fact true. Ruby was often not feeling well. She smoked too much dope and could spend days in bed, leaving Caitlin to fend for herself, which was how Caitlin learned to cook. Towards the end of her time on Magnetic, she was regularly feeding her mother, but none of that – she was sure of it – was what the three men from New York would want to hear, so she said, ‘I learned to fish on Magnetic. I’m still pretty good.’
‘Fish for eating?’ said Robert. ‘How cool.’
‘I’m doing fish tonight,’ said Caitlin, ‘but I didn’t catch these ones. We can go fishing, though. Ask Trevor. We can go somewhere tomorrow to catch some. I’ll clean them. I’ll cook them. It’s not that hard.’
‘Prove that to me,’ said Robert. ‘I’m starving. Cook us a fish, Daisy.’
So, Caitlin cooked for them: she baked fish in tinfoil, and chopped cherry tomatoes for a fresh salad, and made damper in the oven, and arranged it all to look delicious in large white bowls and on flat wooden platters.
‘Daisy Duke, you’re amazing,’ said Robert, wiping his plate with the heel of the round loaf. ‘It’s the best thing I’ve eaten all day.’
‘It’s all we’ve eaten all day,’ said Colby, and once again Caitlin was left to wonder, ‘Have I offended this bloke? Is he always like this, or did I do something wrong?’
Morning came, brighter and more beautiful than the three men from Manhattan could believe. Caitlin made breakfast: mangoes, paw-paw, watermelon, grapefruit, pancakes and instant coffee.
‘Black or white?’ she asked.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Robert looked shocked.
‘The coffee – black or white?’
‘She means with milk or without,’ said Colby. ‘Mine’s fine without.’ He sipped from the cup Caitlin gave him. Her hand was shaking. Every time he opened his mouth, he made her feel like she couldn’t get things right.
‘What is this?’ asked Colby.
‘It’s Nescafé. We got the gold one.’
‘You don’t have a percolator?’ he asked, but Caitlin didn’t know what he meant. ‘It’s some kind of drip-coffee machine,’ she told Trevor, later, ‘and they’re amazed that we don’t have one.’
‘We’ll ask on Hamilton Island,’ said Trevor. ‘We don’t want to give them a reason to complain.’
After breakfast, the jet skis came out. Grant and Robert whooped and hollered and bounced off the waves. Colby went as fast but he rode silently. They swam, sunbaked and read books in their deckchairs. They stopped for lunch on a little island, and slept for a while afterwards and, by 4 pm, with the sun still high, they were ready for some diving.
‘It’s good visibility,’ Trevor said. ‘Clear water, clear skies. You’ll see a lot of coral, maybe some turtles, maybe some rays.’
Caitlin led the way to the lower deck. Robert joked around, saying, ‘And what happens if the oxygen runs out here, Daisy Duke? Who’s going to give me mouth-to-mouth?’
Colby shook his head. ‘Give it up, will you, Robert? Caitlin’s got a job to do here.’ He was cleaning his mask with two of his broad fingers and his spit.
‘She doesn’t mind, do you, Daisy Duke?’ said Robert.
‘I don’t mind,’ said Caitlin.
Colby said no more. He adjusted his mouthpiece, and fell backwards off the back of the boat into the azure sea. Caitlin watched him go. He was a cold fish, no doubt about it. Yet she found herself wanting to go with him, to take his hand under water, if he’d let her, and point out the best of the coral and the rays and see if she could get him to break out of his shell. But she knew it wasn’t possible. Colby was a guest. Caitlin was working. Not only that, he hadn’t yet shown any sign of being interested.
She checked her watch. She was young, and had been diving only three times – in Queensland, you really have to be sixteen before anyone will take you out – and the diving had been the part of the trip that she’d been most nervous about. What if something went wrong? Was she supposed to go down and get somebody who was panicking? She wasn’t sure that she could do it. But it was fine. The guests, all of them experienced divers, surfaced.
‘How was it?’ she asked them.
Robert removed his regulator and stuck both thumbs up. ‘Brilliant!’ he said. His nose was mashed behind his mask and his lips were blue. ‘You should come down. There’s turtles, stingrays. I’m pretty sure I saw a shark. You should see it.’
‘I have seen it,’ Caitlin said, smiling.
‘Of course you have.’ Robert dragged himself up to the back deck, and dumped his oxygen tank to the side. ‘I keep forgetting. This isn’t a holiday for you. This is where you live. I’m green. I’m jealous.’ He was doing that funny dance that people do when they’re trying to get a wetsuit off after swimming. Caitlin went to help.
‘This is our holiday of a lifetime, but it’s your everyday,’ Robert said. Stripped of his wetsuit, Caitlin noticed he was covered in black curls. They marched from the small of his back, up over his rounded shoulders, and because they were wet, they’d stretched out and were clinging upwards, like a million little brushstrokes. ‘What do you say, Colby? Want to swap Wall Street for the Whitsundays? Give up the
rat race and come live Down Under with the world’s most beautiful women?’
He winked at Caitlin, but Colby, only just free of his oxygen tank, did not respond.
And so it went on. Trevor steered and Caitlin served, and the three guests lazed about in the sun, rode jet skis, snorkelled and scuba-dived; and then, except for that first night when they’d stayed in, they’d have showers and disembark at whatever island Trevor had chosen for them. They’d go ashore to eat and drink and – Caitlin guessed – to flirt and dance and make out with whatever girls they found there, and then, sometime after midnight they’d stagger lazily and happily back to the
Blue Moon
. Caitlin, who never managed to fall asleep before they were all back on deck, would hear them walking into walls as they made their way to their cabins.
‘They’re having a good time,’ Trevor would say in a voice that sounded both relieved and satisfied, each and every morning.
Caitlin said, ‘Well, two of them are – Robert and Grant. But that Colby, he’s a bit up himself, isn’t he? He never even cracks a smile.’
‘He’s alright,’ said Trevor, ‘maybe just uptight. They’ve got big jobs, these blokes. The stress, it gets to them. Just keep doing what you’re doing. He seems happy enough to me.’
Which was fair enough. Colby did seem happy enough. He went on the jet skis. He dived on the wrecks. He went ashore in the evenings. He came in late, smelling of beer, and
in the morning he talked to Robert – and laughed loudly – about the fun they’d had in the pub the night before. He ate everything that Caitlin cooked, and he was helpful – he’d take her hand, and help her back onto the diving ramp if they’d all been in the water; he’d hold the door open if he saw her coming up from the galley with sliced watermelon for breakfast; but not once – not until the very last night – did he show any sign that he might actually be interested in getting cosy with her.
Colby hadn’t had sex for seven days, not since he’d left Manhattan. That, for him, was a long time, and Caitlin was cute and, he sensed, keen. Plus, she was single. He’d never been to bed with an Australian girl, so that would be a good thing to get under his belt. But he’d have to handle it carefully. He would only be sowing his wild oats. He would need to keep things casual. And yet, in his experience, people still got hurt, and he hated that.
Trevor pulled up at Townsville Pier. Robert and Grant were heading ashore and Trevor was planning to take advantage of their location to disembark to see Carol.
‘I’ll pop home to see the handbrake,’ he said. ‘She’ll be happy to see me. Provided that’s alright. That nobody needs me here?’
‘No, no, you go ahead. And good for you, Captain,’ Robert had said. ‘Doing your duty. I’m planning to do my duty, too, to cuddle as many women as I can. If you think about it, these are the last women we’ll see this century, and we won’t see any more until the next millennium, and that makes me
feel like I should take advantage. What do you say, Colby?’
‘I think I’ll give it a miss tonight,’ he replied. He did not look at Caitlin, and Caitlin did not look at him, but Robert wasn’t fooled. He looked from one to the other and back again, and grinned.
‘Alright,’ he said, winking. ‘No worries!’
Robert and Grant were the first to disembark. Caitlin set about clearing the table, and stacking crockery back into the cupboards, her every thought about Colby. She could hear him in his cabin, showering. Trevor called out, ‘I’m off then,’ and Caitlin said, ‘See you later.’ And then things went quiet.
Caitlin climbed barefoot up to the top deck and sat with her legs stretched out. She was wearing bikini bottoms and a knotted string anklet. She had her Trevor’s Reef Tours shirt on, too. Carol had given her only the one, and Caitlin had been rinsing it in sea water and drying it in the sun. It had faded and softened, and was prettier for it.
She looked out over the pier. It was lit, and under each light a thousand little insects swarmed. Some of the fish were bioluminescent. After a moment or two, she heard Colby coming quietly up the ladder.
‘Nice evening,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Caitlin.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’
‘No, of course not. That would be nice.’
Colby took a beer from the Esky under one of the leather banquettes and sat down, closer than Caitlin had
expected. Perhaps he understood how little time they had before Trevor was due back, because he wasted none of it.
‘You know, you have a beautiful accent,’ he said.
Caitlin smiled. ‘I don’t have an accent,’ she said. ‘
You
have an accent.’
Colby laughed.
‘You know, you’re nothing like a New York girl.’
‘Well, you’re not like a Japanese man,’ said Caitlin, and then she blushed because it sounded stupid.
Colby looked amused. ‘But why would I be?’ he asked. ‘I’m not from Japan. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m from New York City.’
‘Well, why would I look like I’m from New York?’ countered Caitlin. ‘I’m from Magnetic Island.’
‘Fair enough. But now I’m intrigued … What are the Japanese like? Compared to me, I mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Caitlin. ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about.’
Colby’s lean legs, tanned from the trip, were now as close as he could get to Caitlin’s bare legs without them actually touching. His feet, like hers, were also bare, but they were twice as big with prominent veins.
‘All I know is that Japan must be a strange place,’ Caitlin said, ‘because the tourists we get up here, when they get off the bus, they walk straight down to the sand. They don’t take off their shoes. I don’t mean their runners. They go down in their suits with their work shoes on.’
‘Okay,’ said Colby, nodding, ‘you’re right. I wouldn’t do that. But that can’t be the only thing. What else do Japanese tourists do?’
‘Well, they go crazy for mangoes. I mean it. They walk down the street, they see mangoes rotting on the ground and they take photographs. Because one mango in Japan is eighty dollars. They sell them in department stores. They give them as gifts to people. Instead of flowers, they take a mango.’
Colby laughed. He’d finished the beer and was studying the bottle.
‘Can I get you another?’ asked Caitlin, moving to get up.
‘My turn.’ Colby gently pulled her back down. ‘Let me get one for you.’
Caitlin thought of Trevor seeing Carol. He’d probably have a beer or even a glass of wine. But he was the boss. And she was still on the clock. So she shook her head – no – and said, ‘I better not.’
‘Because you’re working?’
‘Because I’m working.’
‘Then tell me another story. What else do the Japanese do?’
‘Well … they don’t take baths. A friend of mine who works in one of the big hotels in Brisbane, she told me they think it’s disgusting to sit there in dirty water, so they stand outside the bath and turn the shower on themselves. It soaks the carpet.’
‘Let me see …’ said Colby. ‘Would you let me have a bath at your place, if I promised not to wet
your
carpet?’
Caitlin was a smart girl. She knew a pick-up line when she heard one.
‘I don’t have a bath,’ she said, ‘I’ve only got a shower … You’ll have to find somewhere else to have a bath.’
‘Alright, but what about if I don’t want a bath? What if I just need a bed?’
It was as direct a proposition as Caitlin had ever received. Her insides swam. She was enjoying this. ‘But that’s another thing the Japanese don’t do – they don’t sleep in proper beds,’ she said.
‘Are we back on the Japanese now?’
‘My friend from the hotel told me: they spent all this money on new mattresses but they’re too soft. They’d rather sleep on the floor.’
‘Do you like a soft bed, Caitlin?’
‘I suppose I do.’
‘I do, too,’ said Colby, and he leaned over, and she thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he brushed his lips against her ear and said, ‘We’re staying at the Sunshine Shack on Main Street tomorrow night. Just for the one night, then I’m supposed to head down to Sydney for the fireworks.’
‘I know where it is,’ said Caitlin.
Colby’s voice was hoarse. ‘I want you to come and knock on my door. I want to spend one more night with you.’
Caitlin nodded, and then they swiftly separated. Trevor was coming up the stairs.